I've finally found religion.

Tracks like this are why disco took over the world for a hot second, until the dumb dicks in football stadiums took it back. You may experience symptoms of withdrawal after exposure to the bassline.

So hot.

New Grace Jones. More importantly, high-quality Grace Jones. I'm not sure what it is about popular music, but it seems like only the tiniest fraction of people can remain creatively vital for more than a couple of albums, much less decades. I'm very thankful that Grace Jones is one of them, despite her long absence.

It's rare that I'll go and get BurgerKing any more, but every once in a while I get the craving for something they serve. I find extremely processed, blatantly artificial food comforting.

I keep my visits rare, though, because not long after eating, my GI tract without fail throws an UnrecognizedProteinsException or something, followed by a long and messy stack trace.

I'll buy a new pair if Ross gives private lessons. I approve of this highly-targeted viral niche marketing.

Via smrtmnky.

Obama, his Gay Accuser and the Lawyer in a Kilt

[In Washington], Larry Sinclair, a gay man from Minnesota who alleges he snorted cocaine and had sex with the Democratic nominee, held a news conference.

His allegations have been sloshing around on the internet for six months, ever since he posted a YouTube video. But after he took a polygraph test and failed, he has struggled to get mainstream media interest in a story he said began in the back of a limousine in Chicago in 1999.

On Wednesday Sinclair booked a room at the National Press Club to produce the evidence and try to capture the national spotlight for his claims. But he spent much of the time answering questions about himself. He has what is called a colourful background: a 27-year criminal career which includes convictions for fraud, forging cheques, and stealing credit card numbers.

Sinclair was accompanied by his kilt-clad lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley. Sibley has had his own problems: a Florida court struck him off for vexatious litigation, most of it directed against his former wife.

"I don't mean to be impudent," said one reporter, "but why are you wearing a kilt?"

Sibley explained: "It has to do with genitalia. If you are on the smaller side, then pants are not uncomfortable."

As for the evidence, it was scant. Sinclair named the limousine driver, but wasn't sure where he was. The limousine company appears to have folded. Phone records are being sought from Sinclair's provider, but the search has been hampered by the fact that he changed his number four times in two months in late 2007.

Those wanting to talk to Sinclair knew where to find him on Wednesday, however. At the end of the news conference two police officers arrived and arrested him on an outstanding warrant.

These guys are the best IRL trolls since Fred Phelps. Beyond a shadow of a doubt clones of Andy.

Edit: It's really a shame that Larry Sinclair's claims are so likely to be false. Just as GW Bush's supposed appeal was rooted in the feeling that you could sit down and have a beer with him, Obama's appeal for me is rooted in the feeling that you could blow him in the back of a limousine in exchange for drugs. Offering drugs rather than reciprocation shows a concern for fairness balanced with an appropriately presidential level of detachment.

I've been motivated to go back through my old schoolbooks lately. From The Japanese Film: Art And Industry:

The benshi was so important to the early films and has played such a major rôle in the history of the films in Japan, his influence continuing even to this day, that an understanding of what he did and why is basic to any understanding of Japanese movies. Essentially, he explained. He was somewhat like the lecturer who used to appear with travel films in the West, introducing the film by telling you what you were going to see and then, as the film progressed, telling you what you were seeing. ...

( Read more... )

The writers treat the benshi as a slightly ridiculous historical curiosity, but the combination of a silent film with a live narrator and orchestra is so different from the present day experience of movies that it should probably be considered a different form of theater altogether, and one that is in theory no more obsolete than other forms of live theater.

But the practice sounds as though it's nearly extinct. In a 2002 interview posted on MidnightEye.com, Midori Sawato, its most prominent contemporary practitioner, estimates that there were then fewer than 10 benshi working in Japan.

That interview and accompanying article contain all kinds of great info about silent film history in Japan and elsewhere, but this bit is particularly cool:

That any films do remain from [the silent] period is largely down to the work of one man, Shunsui Matsuda. Born in 1925, Matsuda began his vocation working as a child benshi. In 1947, when post-War shortages meant there really weren't a lot of films being shown in the more provincial areas of Japan, he found himself part of a troupe of itinerant benshi travelling around Kyushu, whose burgeoning coal mining industry had attracted a lot of workers to the region. The desperate shortage of any means of entertainment in the area meant that reruns of old silent films were still immensely popular. The story goes that Matsuda discovered one of the projectionists snipping out footage from one of these films because it "dragged the film down", and thereupon decided to dedicate his life to the act of preserving these early cinematic documents.

A troupe of itinerant benshi! The book makes being a benshi sound at least a little glamorous in trying to illustrate their former prominence, but just the phrase a troupe of itinerant benshi implies the existence of a whole demimonde not even hinted at in the book.

UrbanConnections.co.jp is selling an entire book in English about the benshi for ¥2075 with shipping (~20 USD) and I'm sorely tempted to order it.

I've long been a fan of tv shows like popup video, events that involve live additions to filmed material, and amateur translation scenes, so the idea of combining the roles of translator, storyteller, film historian, critic and maybe even stand up comedian in a single performer is pretty appealing.

I think the closest thing I've ever had to a benshi-style movie experience was in college when my professor of German film, a German gentleman who had been just a boy at the end of World War II, stood up next to a faded and unsubtitled print of Hitler Youth Quex and translated the dialogue for us on the fly, with commentary on the cinematic and rhetorical devices used. Very cool and enriching in a way that no regular film showing could've been.

From king_duncan. Comedienne Judy Tenuta Licensed to Marry Gay Fans

Known for her quirky stand-up act and television specials, Tenuta just became an ordained minister in California so she can marry gay couples in a special union she calls “Judyism.” Her goal now is to preside over the marriages of her legions of gay fans.

As a minister, Tenuta promises to write special “Judyism” vows for gay couples

“They must promise to say ‘I love you’ once a day, hold hands, and if they go to bed angry, they must have really hot hate sex to make up,” she explain.

FUCK YES

Having the ceremony done by Judy Tenuta is now a non-negotiable requirement for any would-be husband.

In the pink/purple kimono is the Tanuki Princess and in the red/black/gold kimono is her ultra-protective retainer Lady Hagi. Lady Hagi beats Tanuki-hime with a cherry branch when she confesses that she met a handsome human boy in the forest. Hagi then puts on a big production (literally) about what a scourge humans are on the Tanuki.